Mona Lisa (A Yuri! on ICE fanfiction)
by LittleMissHels
Summary: Katsuki Yuuri is trapped in a painting. But when he was uncovered by a certain silver-haired man, a whole new world comes to light for him. Victor Nikiforov is a famous archaeologist. When he uncovers the painting of Katsuki Yuuri, he can't help but marvel at the Mona Lisa that he had found. But what he discovers about the shy painting is nothing he ever could have imagined.
1. Prologue

Prologue

 _19th July 1998. Hasetsu, Kyushu, Japan._

The Katsuki house, hidden under the large shadows of the trees and the fumes of the hot springs surrounding it, was silent. The birds that sat on top of the cherry blossom trees were quiet as they perched on top of the pink boughs. But the sound of a loud banging from the house quickly sent the birds flying towards the top of the hill where the ruins of the Hasetsu castle was.

Inside the house, a woman was desperately trying to bar the doors and the windows. Her bleached blonde hair had long fell out of its ponytail. Her three piercings in her ear gleamed in the sunlight that peeked through the boarded up windows.

"Mari!" a man shouted from outside, banging on the door again. "I know you're in there!"

Katsuki Mari, her face covered in a thin sheen of sweat, quickly ran up the stairs to her little brother's room. She flung open the door, revealing her brother and the small knapsack of items that he had packed. She raised a questioning eyebrow. Five-year-old Katsuki Yuuri nodded and heaved the knapsack onto his back.

Under her brother's bed was a small silver framed canvas, depicting his room with all its furniture, doors and pictures that hung on the walls. Mari, being a talented artist, had painted the canvas herself, along with most of the paintings that hung in Yuuri's room. She pushed it into the middle of the room and pointed at it.

"Get in." she ordered her brother.

Yuuri's big brown eyes widened in fear. "Mari-neechan, what about you?"

Mari shook out her bleached hair. "I'll be fine, Yuuri. You're the one that matters the most. Now get in. Come out only when I come to get you, alright? If he finds you, hide in the framework and don't make a sound. _Remember to hide in the framework_."

"But Mari-neechan-" Yuuri started to say, but it was interrupted by a crash down the stairs. The door just broke apart and they could hear footsteps and rummaging down the stairs.

"Hurry!" Mari screeched and pushed her brother towards the painting, but not before giving him a hug and a peck on the cheek. "I love you, Yuuri."

"I love you too, Mari-neechan." he said and stepped into the painting. The last thing that Mari could see was the tips of his dark hair before he fell in, shrinking to fit inside the canvas. She had just pushed the painting under the bed when the bedroom door flew open.

"Where is your brother, Mari?" the man shoved onto the ground and pointed the gun that he had threateningly against her temple.

"I don't know!" she lied. "I don't know where Yuuri is, I swear!"

The man bared his teeth, distorting his handsome face. "You're lying!"

He fired a bullet into Mari's right leg. The entire house trembled with Mari's tortured screams. Blood flowed steadily through her pant legs and onto the wood.

"You did this to _us_ , the two of us! If you just tell me where your brother is, I'll spare you." the man howled. "I'm in love with you, Mari. Just tell me where your brother is and I'll spare you. I love you so much and I don't want to do this to you."

Mari barked out a delusional laugh as white stars danced across her eyes. "Love? Is this what you call love? You're _obsessed_ with me. It was never love and it never will be. I'm not in love with you. I have- _had_ , a freaking family! I will never be with you, Hoshino, I would rather die."

"But you do love me, Mari. I know you do, but you couldn't because of them. Your family. I got rid of your parents already. If I got rid of your brother, we could be together, Mari! Tell me where he is."

"You'll never find him." Mari smirked through the pain. "You will never, ever find him. Not in a million years. Yuuri is all I have left and I won't let you hurt him like you hurt my parents."

The man's scream reverberated through the room as he threw his head back in anger. "I _will_ find him, Mari. I'll hurt him even worse than you hurt me."

"Dream on." Mari coughed.

The man's trigger finger pulled the trigger. The bang reverberated through the house and the cherry blossoms and then as quickly as it came, it was gone, leaving the man standing silently, tears flowing down his face and Mari's bloody body lying limp on the floor, staining the wood a dark crimson.

The man, Hoshino, realising what he had done, quickly raised his gun to his temple and fired, leaving two crumpled and bleeding bodies on the floor.

Just a few feet away, under the bed, imprisoned in the silver-framed canvas, Yuuri was crying. His chubby little hands covered his ears as he sat on the ground, rocking himself back and forth.

He would never see his Mari-neechan again.

And so Yuuri laid there, right where his sister had left him.

Imprisoned inside the painting.


	2. Chapter One

Chapter One

On an unusually snowy April morning, with small flurries of snow falling down to the cherry blossoms, the chill covered the silent town of Hasetsu in blankets of white and cold. The sound of crunching feet in the distance could have been mistaken for a small animal in this case of the deserted town, but a few more of them signified something else that was much bigger was coming. In the serenity of the snow-dusted cherry blossoms, arrived a small group of people, dressed warmly for the cold weather and carrying rather distinct boxes and cases full of equipment.

They were of varying ages and heights and they were whispering in hushed voices to each other as they approached the building in front of them, crumbling and dirty with cracks in the walls from years of neglect.

"Stay close. We don't know what's in there." a rather elderly man at the front ordered, his mouth pressed into a permanent frown.

"Yeah, yeah, Yakov. We heard you." a rather short fifteen year old volunteer snidely replied, pulling his hood over his shoulder-length blond hair. He was originally drifting away from the group while he was marvelling and posting photos of a stone statue depicting a particularly ugly sea urchin that stood in the town square.

"This is serious business, Yuri." Yakov, the man at the front said, rolling his eyes and deepening his frown. "If you are here to sightsee, then you can leave."

"Whatever, you old geezer." Yuri scoffed.

Among the company of men (and one woman), was a rather young man, the most renowned in the field of archaeology out of all the others present. His name was Victor Nikiforov. A man with silver hair, shockingly bright blue eyes and extremely handsome complexion, he was a hard one to miss amongst all the others, who sported normal hair shades and duller eye colours. He nudged Yuri warningly and followed Yakov into the house, keeping an eye out for anything that may be of interest.

Though he wouldn't have dared to admit out loud, he was pretty sure that there was nothing of value inside the crumbling house. The locals in the town the next town over had said that there had been a murder involved with the Katsuki household in Hasetsu, the ghost town of Kyushu, and that there might have been treasure involved, so Victor stepped inside anyway.

The furniture inside was mostly in one piece, but a lot of them seemed to have been shoved against the door, but that was before it was broken down by someone. Dust had given each surface of the house a thick coat and squeaks of rodents could be heard under the rotting floorboards. The windows were all barred up, but most of the wood had collapsed onto the ground, allowing little slivers of sunlight into the home. Dust motes drifted about in flurries in the stuffy air.

Yuri, upon entering, gave a little sneeze, which earned several calls of 'bless you' and 'gesundheit' throughout the house. He muttered a quick 'thanks' before descending the stairs that led to a basement.

Victor removed a small camera from the breast pocket of his black blazer that he wore. Brushing away part of his silver hair that flopped over his left eye, he marched up the stairs to see what he could find.

Directly up the rickety wooden stairs was a door that stood ajar. There were drops of crimson on the ground that the space between the door and the doorframe allowed him to see.

He peeked in with his right eye and pushed the door open. Lying in front of him were bodies, rotting away. One had black pants and a white blouse on while the other was dressed in a men's green t-shirt and khaki shorts - possibly the owners of the house. Inside the man's rotting hand however, was a pistol that he had clung onto even in death.

Victor, trying his best not to scream at the terrifying sight in front of him, treaded cautiously around the bodies and looked around the rest of the room. The bed by the entrance was small, the blankets on it colourful with pictures of cars on them; made for a young child. When Victor examined the clothes inside the wardrobe on the other side of the room, he found it half-full with articles of clothing made for a rather small and chubby boy.

Dusty painted canvas hung on the walls, most of them scenes of the cherry blossoms and the hot springs around the house, but one depicted a cute Japanese toddler, smiling a smile with a missing front tooth out at Victor. The words 'Katsuki Yuuri' were painted in swirly letters with baby blue paint. Victor leaned in and examined the small signature at the bottom left corner of the canvas - _by Katsuki Mari, 29th November 1997. Happy 5th birthday to our little Katsudon_.

Victor raised a silver eyebrow. If this Katsuki Yuuri was alive now, he would be around 24 years old, four years younger than his 28 years, he mused and walked towards the little desk beside the painting. The desk was covered with pieces of paper depicting senseless scribbles from coloured crayons, which were still lying on the ground and scattered all over the table. Wobbly black letters spelled out 'Yuuri' on one of the sheets. The black crayon was still lying on the place where the boy had signed off.

A glint of sunlight from the window reflected on something that was hidden under the bed. Walking around the bodies again, Victor bent down and pulled the object out from under the bed. It was another canvas, framed with silver.

It was coated with so much dust that Victor's fingers turned grey when he tried to rub the dust away. Retreating to the wardrobe, he retrieved a baby blanket to clean it, having left his case of excavation equipment down the stairs with Yakov.

Muttering rushed apologies to the dead boy, he quickly used it rub all the dust away, turning the originally white blanket an unhealthy shade of grey. Peering inside the canvas, Victor frowned. It simply depicted this same room, but looking like it would have done before the owners had been killed. The only differences were that there were no dead bodies on the floor in the painting and that there was a small painted knapsack that lay on the bed. It was such a simple painting that Victor didn't know why the painter - possibly Katsuki Mari again - had even bothered to paint it.

Light footsteps walked into the room and stopped at the door, probably pausing because of the dead bodies on the floor.

"Find anything of value?" Yuri asked, pushing his blond hair off his forehead.

Victor looked up at him. "Just this painting. The frame is valuable - made of silver, but the things depicted in it is really simple, just what this room looked like before the murder."

Yuri shrugged and raised an eyebrow at the rotting bodies in front of him. "What happened to _them_?"

Victor risked another look at the two bodies on the ground next to him and swallowed back some bile that had risen up his throat. "Dead and never buried." and then to switch the unsettling topic, he pointed to the dusty painting of Katsuki Yuuri on the wall. "Oh yeah, did you know that the boy living here was also called Yuuri?"

Yuri scowled. "Don't you dare make up another nickname for me now. 'Kitty' was bad enough."

Victor's mouth stretched into a thoughtful smile as he placed the portrait under his arm and walked around the bodies to reach Yuri. "I was thinking that _Yurio_ might be a nice one..."

Yuri roared, not unlike a tiger and stalked down the stairs, body visibly shaking and muttering under his breath. Victor chuckled softly and went to examine the painting again, but not before closing the door over. He didn't want two dead bodies staring at him all the time. This time, however, he saw that by the framework at the edge of the painting, a head was sticking out. _Definitely wasn't there before_.

The face that stuck out was handsome, no doubt, with messy black hair and blue half-rimmed glasses and soft features for a man. His big brown eyes stared out at him with curiosity, looking at him as if the man hadn't seen another human being in years. The face looked just like what Katsuki Yuuri would have looked like if he was still alive.

Victor staggered back and dropped the portrait on the ground, making the silver frame and the wooden back of the canvas clatter against the floor. The face, terrified, disappeared.

"What the hell?!"


	3. Chapter Two

Chapter Two

The almost inhuman screech that erupted from Victor's mouth had shattered the previous serenity of the house. The dust motes around him had been blown around in a hectic mass of swirling flurries as he hit the ground. The painting remained still, unmoving after the silver frame had finished clattering.

Yuri poked his head out, peering at Victor with suspicion in his green eyes. "Oi, Victor! What are you doing, you old geezer? Let's get moving. Yakov said to leave."

"Tell him..." Victor said after evening out his breaths. "Tell him I'll just be a minute."

"And what are you doing with that painting?"

"Just curious."

Yuri rolled his eyes and shrugged. "Whatever. Just be quick. We're leaving soon." and disappeared down the stairs again.

Victor's blue eyes darted around cautiously and after making sure that no one was about to come, he started moving slowly and cautiously, disregarding the smudges of dust on his blazer and eyes wide open, taking the painting up in his hands. He brought it up to his face to examine the oddity.

The painting, even thought it depicted the room that he was previously in, was covered in almost non-sensical strokes of colour. The texture was flat though, much to Victor's surprise when he ran his hand along the canvas. The bed in the painting had its strokes looking furry and soft and the table, chair and wardrobe's strokes were hard, straight and efficient. The walls and floor were done in a hurry and were simply horizontal strokes that still left bits of white canvas in the middle. But Victor could tell through this painting, even though what it depicted was simple, the artist - regardless of it being Katsuki Mari or not - had great skill and talent.

And there he was, the little man in the canvas, walking around the painted room like it was three-dimensional inside, not just a flat surface. He hadn't noticed Victor yet, his back was towards the outside of the painting.

Victor's eyes were shimmering with wonder and excitement. What the hell was this anyway? Is the man inside actually moving? _And he's pretty handsome too..._

He watched as the little man, treading across the beige strokes of paint on the ground, picked up his rucksack in the middle of the room, brushed the crayons off of the table onto the floor and placed the bag in replacement. He proceeded to remove several tiny articles of clothing from the bag and throwing it onto the bed, in which Victor watched every move with interest. And that was when Victor, blushing, noticed that he wasn't wearing that much at all, just pieces of cloth from several tiny shirts and pants put together into a makeshift outfit.

As if feeling the gaze from Victor's eyes and the heat from Victor's blush, the man turned around and saw him. His face turning beet red, he proceeded to run over to the edge of the painting where the framework was.

"No! Stop!" Victor shouted, thrusting out a hand. The man inside the painting had froze, the only thing that Victor could see on the canvas being his left leg, shoulders and a bit of his hair. "Just... stop."

The man visibly tensed up, but backed into the painting anyway, looking dreadfully scared of the silver-haired man outside of the painting.

"Why are you hiding?" Victor asked gently, hands both gripping the canvas in his upright position.

The man in the portrait was beautiful, Victor thought, with soft black hair and blue half-rimmed glasses with big brown eyes, just like the toddler in the painting by her sister, looked like. Victor could easily see the flat planes of muscle on him through the thin clothes he wore, even there was a little bit of softness to his cheeks. _Katsuki Yuuri._

His eyes, a captivating chocolate brown, were shifting nervously back and forth as his hands gripped his sides. He wouldn't even look Victor in the eye.

In all his life, Victor had never encountered something so wondrous before. Something that seemed to come right out of the land of magic and fantasy. In his childhood, he had read Harry Potter, a very popular series about a young wizard and the magic school in the story - Hogwarts - was the only place where he had heard about moving portraits and paintings, but of course that wasn't real. But here in this very house, he had discovered a canvas with a moving man inside.

The man continued to hide away as Victor kept trying to call him back. He really didn't understand what the man was hiding from.

"No, come back." Victor coaxed, keeping his voice gentle and a kind smile on his face. "I won't hurt you. I couldn't even if I wanted to."

And eventually, after minutes of persuasion, the man had settled on a chair that was by the painted table and turned around to face him, still looking edgy and meeting Victor's gaze.

Victor didn't what to say in that moment. He was just captured in the aura of the man sitting on the chair, no matter how small he was right now and whether he was a painting or not. He looked real, too real in all the almost non-sensical strokes of colour that his sister had spent hours inscribing onto the canvas. He looked as if he was a real person and then just jumped right into the canvas.

"H-how old is this painting?" Victor muttered to himself.

"Twenty years since." the man in the painting whispered, as if answering Victor's questions.

Victor's blue eyes widened. "You can talk!" he exclaimed, clapping a hand to his mouth in surprise.

The man immediately blushed an adorable red and shrunk back in his chair, covering his mouth tightly with both hands. Eventually, he stood up with urgency and hurried out into the framework, embarrassed and scared of the consequences of him opening his mouth when his sister had told him moments before her death that he should never speak to anyone if he was found.

"No no no no no! Stop!" Victor hissed, his blue eyes desperately searching the canvas and the frame for the other man. "Please don't leave."

The man, his interest piqued, had come out again. This time, his long and pale fingers gripped the edge of the silver frame and his head had come out along with part of his neck, but the rest of him still remained hidden.

Victor sighed in relief and ran a hand through his hair, which the man in the painting blushed at. "What's your name?" he asked, in hopes of confirming his thoughts on the man in the painting's identity.

"K-Katsuki... Yuuri."

Victor had smiled kindly out at him, even though the man didn't return it. "Well, Yuuri. Hi, I'm Victor Nikiforov, nice to meet you."

Before the other man had time to reply, Yuri had stomped up the stairs, his green eyes stabbing into Victor's with an intense and ferocious gaze.

"Well, geezer, you coming or not?!"

Yuri's ferocious voice had frightened Yuuri so much that he ran out of the painting and into the framework. Yuri, of course, hadn't missed that flash of movement. Marching over, he ripped the canvas out of Victor's hands to see the head and fingers of the man sticking out. Upon seeing the new arrival, his head and fingers disappeared. Yuri's eyes widened in shock.

"What the fuck...?"


	4. Chapter Three

Chapter Three

The teenage Russian lunged forwards, his pupils dilated with shock and his pale hands outstretched. After tugging the canvas out of Victor's unsuspecting hands, he gripped the sides and shook the canvas, but the painted man that ran from the center of the canvas to the frame was nowhere to be seen.

"What the hell, Victor?" Yuri demanded, shaking the canvas violently again.

Grimacing, Victor pitied Yuuri, who was probably scared out of his mind with all the shaking and Yuri's fiery and abrupt demeanour and voice.

With a nervous smile that he forced across his porcelain cheeks, Victor walked forwards and plucked the canvas out of Yuri's hands. "Now, now, Yuri." he chastised. "That is a very expensive frame. Yakov would want you to damage it, now, would he?"

Yuri growled like the tiger on his black shirt would have and scowled. "But... what the hell was that thing that moved across the canvas like that?"

Victor, eyes frantically scanning the canvas for Yuuri and sighing quietly in relief when he was nowhere to be seen on the canvas, shook his head. "Yuri, I think that dust is really getting to your head. You're just hallucinating. Shouldn't we head back now?"

Yakov, poking his head up towards the two, had finally had enough of the waiting. "Vitya, Yuri. Are you two coming or not?"

With a look that would have incinerated Victor and the painting on the spot, in which Victor simply returned with a nonchalant and smug expression, Yuri marched down the stairs, muttering profanities under his breath, like he usually did when some things didn't go the way that he wanted it to.

Victor, tucking the canvas under his arm, quickly followed them down the stairs, leaving Katsuki Yuuri's bedroom and the dead bodies behind him. The sooner that he got out of this place, the better. To have dead bodies staring at you, even though they were behind a few sets of doors and walls, was still rather unsettling. And Victor was sure that he would take at least a couple of months to at least attempt to forget what he had seen of the rotting bodies and the bloodstained wood.

After descending the stairs, Yakov had handed Victor his excavation equipment in his case and had eyed the silver frame of the canvas with a speculative gaze, but didn't ask that much about it. Mila and Georgi, another two of his colleagues that came with them to Hasetsu, were all ready to go outside the door, standing in the snow that was now flying down in fast heated flurries, dusting their hats and coats with white. Same were the cherry blossoms that grew around the Katsuki household, their boughs having seen terrifying horrors from twenty years ago. And they were all eager to leave them behind.

Victor didn't want to tell anyone else about the bodies, though. He didn't want to spoil their dreams tonight, as he was sure that he and Yuri would be suffering from nightmares when they are going to sleep. The group departed as suddenly as they came, heading towards the almost deserted tram station and heading towards Tokyo to catch the next flight to St Petersburg. The only thing that they left behind were their footprints in the snow.

On the tram to Tokyo, Victor had asked for a separate compartment on the tram that no one else was sitting in. Yakov and the others didn't stop him; they knew that sometimes he needed to think alone and without any interference.

Carrying his case of equipment in his left hand and the canvas under his right arm, he walked out of the compartment all the others were in, stepping cautiously over Georgi's long legs that were outspread across the floor as he slept, snoring gently and closed the door over.

After he was sure that the others were out of earshot and that he was in a different compartment, he pulled the canvas out and sat down.

"Yuuri?" he whispered, knocking gently on the canvas. "Yuuri. It's me, Victor. You can come out now."

Katsuki Yuuri, his brown eyes wide open for any sign of danger, had cautiously pulled his head out of the frame with his hands gripping the wall in the painting. His gaze was clearly mistrusting of Victor as he attempted to look around Victor's silver head for others that might be lurking somewhere near him, watching right now.

"It's alright, Yuuri. It's just me." Victor said, putting a genuinely kind and comforting smile. It sounded crazy in his head, but Yuuri wanted to melt at that very moment and there was a small fluttering that took place in his stomach. But against his better judgement, he walked out, revealing himself and sat down in the chair as he did before.

Yuuri couldn't restrain himself and his mouth - the little traitor - had blurted out without his consent. "Who was _that_?"

Victor had laughed, a warm and velvety sound that came from deep within him. it was genuine and relaxed. Yuuri tensed instinctively. In his years trapped in the canvas, he had been so scared of being found out found and had always freaked out whenever something moved, whether it as the sound of the curtains slapping against the glass or a mouse scampering across the canvas or a spider clacking to itself in the darkness under the bed. Now, whenever there was a noise, he would tense up and have the instinct to either take cover under the covers that his sister had painted for him or hid in the framework, as her sister had instructed him to do in the last minutes of her life.

"That was Yuri Plisetsky, one of my colleagues. He tends to talk and act like that. He's simply a force that can't be reckoned with."

Yuuri, even though he was trying to understand what Victor was saying, had no idea what he was talking about. Spending all his childhood in a painting when he should have been getting educated and going to an university had obviously taken a toll on him. Naturally, he wouldn't have understood some of the English language that an adult ought to. He currently only has the knowledge of a five year old.

" _C-Colleague_?" he muttered to himself, trying out the strange word.

Victor smiled to himself at the young man's naivety. "It means a person that you work with, Yuuri."

Yuuri blushed an adorable crimson and pushed up his glasses, hiding his big brown eyes behind his jet black bangs. "I-I'm sorry." he whimpered. "I don't know a lot."

Victor's eyes widened as the other man's eyes started to glass over and beads of moisture threatened to fall. "No no no, it's fine. It's alright. I don't mind..." he started to say, but the waterworks were already beginning.

Hastily running a hand through his silver hair that was already starting to thin from his stress this early in life, he sighed through his nose. "Look, Yuuri." he said, trying to calm him down and staring into Yuuri's teary brown orbs with his bright blue ones. "We're heading back to St Petersburg now - that's where I live. You don't need to cry over something like this. Look, I'll teach you all about English and Maths back at Russia, alright? Then you don't need to worry about anything."

Yuuri, rubbing his slightly bloodshot eyes, nodded slowly and curled up into a ball on his chair to avoid all eye contact. Victor could see that he needed to be left alone right now and that he needed to sleep.

Victor watched in silence as the man slowly lifted himself off of the chair and climbed into the colorful and tiny bed that his sister had painted for him. Victor could see the obvious discomfort as he crammed his legs onto the tiny bed, obviously fit for someone much, _much_ smaller than him.

His innocent brown eyes, half closed and glassy with incoming sleep, closed, the last thing that he saw before he fell asleep being Victor's piercing blue eyes. His facial features relaxed and his hands relaxed against the small pillow. A stray tear had slipped down Yuuri's face and pressed a small circle moisture against his pillow and his soft cheeks.

Involuntarily, Victor felt a small flutter in his chest and found himself smiling. He stroked the canvas gently with the back of his hand and tucked it by his portmanteau on the ground. Putting his head against the window, he stared out into the passing cityscape as night fell across the city and the lights in the compartment started to light up.

He glanced at the sleeping man in the canvas again and felt the little flutter in his chest again. Even though he had just met him today, he felt that he couldn't help but care for the man that have had an obviously traumatic start in life and ended up spending years in a canvas. But what really puzzled him was how Yuuri had got there in the first place. You can't just jump into a painting, can you?

As Victor drifted to sleep, he could still feel the lasting flutter in his chest at the thought of the mysterious man that slept in the canvas by his feet.


	5. Chapter Four

**A/N:**

 **Sorry for not updating in such a long time~ I had been suffering through weeks of exam preparation and exams that I haven't had the time to update at all, and waterpolo can really just suck the life out of you. So. Tiring. Anyway, sorry for the delay and I hope you enjoy this chapter! The next update may be slightly delayed as well as I have a huge maths exam and my chemistry and physics exams coming up as well :(**

Victor, his silver hair and trench coat dusted with the snow falling from the patched grey sky in St Petersburg, fumbled for his keys in his pockets, trying his best not to shake Yuuri's portrait too much as he carried it under his arm. The younger Japanese man, having woken up in the middle of the flight to Moscow, had remained awake for the rest of the flight and the transition to the flight to St Petersburg, but had not attempted to make any conversation with Victor, aside from asking where they were.

His brown eyes would shimmer with wonder whenever he looked around the first class seats and the airports and they went to. It was almost adorable, in a way. He had fallen asleep again during the landing in St Petersburg and remained so for the remainder of the journey to Victor's large apartment downtown.

Makkachin, hearing the sound of the keys jingling outside and the door opening, had pounced onto his owner, licking his cheeks, chin and the silver hair that flopped carelessly over Victor's bright blue left eye. Of course, during the fall that Victor had suffered from, the painting fell out of his grip and clattered face down against the floor. Victor, panicking, had immediately picked it up and saw that Yuuri had fallen out of his painted bed in shock. The Japanese man sat cross-legged on the floor, a hand on his chest and one lodged in his jet black hair, looking around for his fallen glasses. The man was muttering in fluent Japanese as he scavenged around on the floor, his brown eyes squinting to see. That was when Victor realised his face was all heated up. Katsuki Yuuri looked a lot more handsome without his glasses.

"Th-they're over there, Yuuri, to your left." Victor's mouth formed the words before he could stop himself and mentally chastised himself for doing so.

Yuuri shifted his hand to the left and grasped the blue leg of his glasses. Sighing with relief, he put it back on his face to focus his eyes.

"V-Victor..." he started to say, looking around the apartment with fear behind his eyes at the large poodle that lay on the ground obediently by Victor's side. "W-where are we?"

Victor stood up and laughed, the sound rushing out his mouth without him trying to restrain it. "That was Makkachin, my dog. Sorry if he woke you up. And this is my apartment, where I live."

Victor's apartment was large and spacious, no doubt, otherwise he would have spent a lot of money on this place for nothing. Every room of his apartment was artistically styled, with high-quality furniture and modern designs that were framed on the perfect white walls. Victor rested the canvas on the arm of the blue sofa and hung his beige trench coat on the coat hanger by a chair.

Yuuri, blinking the sleep out of his eyes, looked around with slightly glossy eyes, taking everything in, from the new and foreign aromas that he could smell through the thick layer of canvas to the beautiful glass lamps that dangled and swayed on the ceiling from the breeze from an open window. His eyes skipped over the myriad of doors and the strange and humongous equipment from inside one of them. He swore he saw a flash of blue, reflected by the sun and heard the sound of splashing inside another exposed room.

Victor had skipped off towards the direction of the kitchen and opened one of the white cupboards, taking something out - a small white hook with a sticky back to attach to the wall. Yuuri watched as he gently lifted his canvas up and held it up for Yuuri to see all around the spacious apartment.

"Do you want to see anything before I hang you up?" Victor asked, his eyes sparkling like the flash of splashing blue Yuuri saw behind one of the doors.

"Yes please." Yuuri whispered, tugging at a loose thread on his makeshift shirt.

Victor poised a graceful hand under his chin and looked around, deep in thought. "Anywhere in particular?" he asked, while Makkachin, the large poodle, bounced around and barked happily by his feet.

Yuuri felt his face heat up. Human interaction and any form of caring was foreign to him, a memory locked up and stored away in a mental drawer that was hard to open, buried down with years of constant fear and scarring memories. He hadn't experienced that much of life and love - something that his mother, Hiroko, used to call 'L words' - before he was shut up in the canvas, so everything was new and strange, in a way. To find that Victor, someone that he had just met the day before and in the most peculiar predicament, had wanted to know what how he felt and what he wanted to see was... shocking.

"I thought I heard water..." Yuuri blurted, tinting his cheeks a shade of light pink. Victor chuckled to himself and walked over to a door, pushing it open wider. He put the canvas inside to see the small swimming pool, with dim sunlight reflecting off every ripple and wave on the surface and the non-sensical blue streaks that the reflection painted across the light ceiling. St Petersburg, slightly snowy and faded, loomed outside of the floor-length windows, catching the grey light on its roofs.

"My swimming pool." Victor said bashfully, scratching the back of his head. "It's just something that came with the apartment."

"It's amazing." Yuuri said, slightly breathless. He had never seen such a beautiful swimming pool before, but, to be fair, he hadn't seen a lot in his lifetime. He had only been to a swimming pool once before in his life, when he was around 3 years old, he remembered, but it was mostly hazy. He just remembered a lot of fuzzy blue and the sound of splashing in the background. He had never been a strong swimmer and had never adapted well to the water like some other children his age did. He remembered a little bit about spending most of his time in the swimming pool that visit, clinging onto Mari, who was teasing him for being a little wimp.

"D-do you like it?" Victor asked, a small smile on his face as he looked at the man inside the canvas.

"Yes definitely, but I-I-I-'ve actually never really swam that much before..." Yuuri started, not knowing what he should say and what he shouldn't. He didn't know what would hurt the Russian man's feelings, so he told the truth. "I never liked the water that much. I'm not the kind of person that swims."

Victor, nodding silently, withdrew from the room, leaving the splashing iridescent blues of the water behind. Yuuri, teetering on his heels, looked around, seeing a closed door. The door was he only one in the apartment that wasn't open and wasn't a bathroom. "W-what's in there?" he asked, pointing.

"My office." Victor said, his voice suddenly tensing. "Nothing much, just filled with things that are to do with my job."

"What kind of job?" Yuuri found himself asking. _Oh great,_ he thought. Victor must be thinking how irritating and nosy he is, asking so many questions when they just met yesterday.

Victor's eyes softened, however, and his mouth curved into a pleasant smile that faintly resembled a heart shape. Yuuri liked it; it suited the man's kind bubbly nature and pleasant face. It was clear that he loved his job, whatever it was. "I'm an archaeologist." Victor said, looking kindly down at Yuuri. "I dig up old and fascinating treasures in amazing places and research about them."

"Did... did you find _me_ because of your job?" Yuuri whispered. After all, he had heard him coming in the front door and the hushed voices, speaking in unidentifiable adult jargon down below. Years spent in darkness had really developed his other senses, such as his hearing - how he heard them like that - and his sense of smell, even though all that he could usually smell was musty dust motes and stuffy air. His glasses didn't help through the dim lighting under the bed either; it was practically useless in the darkness and he kept losing them all the time.

"Yes." Victor murmured softly, loud enough so that Yuuri could just hear him. "I did."

Both men had remained relatively quiet over the remaining minutes of the tour around the apartment. Victor noticed how Yuuri only spoke up when something really truly intrigued him or if he wanted to ask another question. He was intrigued by many things, one of those things being the small gym that Victor had beside the swimming pool. Yuuri made Victor try every single piece of equipment that he had, such as the treadmill, the shoulder press, the dumbbells, the butterfly and the pulley. He specifically seemed to enjoy how the treadmill worked however, and kept telling Victor to do it again and again, and without much argument, Victor always said yes.

Perhaps it was the onslaught of exercise or the heat in the room, but Victor's face couldn't help but flushing up whenever the younger man in the canvas was talking. Victor liked to think that it was the exercise and ignored the little butterflies that would erupt every time Yuuri talked. After all, they only met yesterday.

Definitely the exercise then, or so he thought.


	6. Chapter Five

Chapter Five

Yuri Plisetsky found it hard to forget the dead bodies on the bloodstained floor. Whenever he closed his eyes, he could see their rotten eyeballs staring back into the depths of his soul. Sleep had been elusive for the past month, and the Russian boy was absolutely exhausted. But however, when he did manage to find himself drifting off into the realm of dreams, he would wake up several hours later in the middle of the night, screaming.

Potya, his cat, didn't know what was going on, so whenever Yuri woke, she would have jumped off the bed, cowering on the armchair with fear and disdain in her eyes. Today was one of those days.

He never knew how traumatizing archaeology could be. And to think that everyone else on Yakov's elite team had already seen such horrors before that came with uncovered tombs, he was starting to think that maybe his dream of becoming an archaeologist, and studying under Victor, would be impossible at the rate this was going.

The old man had talent, more talent than anyone in the team. Victor had insurmountable amounts of knowledge and the enthusiasm for the job. He was the perfect archaeologist. The world had regarded him as that for over 8 years. And it was something that Yuri was sure he would never be.

He didn't have enough knowledge. Not yet. He didn't have that much enthusiasm either. But one thing that he has is determination. And he was determined to find out what the hell that thing in the painting was.

Over the past week, ever since Yakov's team came back from the ghost town of Kyushu, Victor has been acting strange. The man's natural smiles would be forced, and he turned down any invitations to any parties or get-togethers. When Mila and Georgi asked if they could visit his apartment personally to drop some equipment off, he adamantly refused and said he would go and collect it himself.

Yuri grimaced and sat up in his bed, too impatient to wait until the sun came up, and turned on the lights. Potya hissed at the sudden brightness and buried her furry face underneath the throw pillows on the armchair. Yuri shrugged.

"Sorry, Potya." he stroked her back gently and with a rare smile on his face. "But I need to find that old silver-haired geezer."

There was no question as to what he was going to wear. Victor wouldn't care anyway, and all of his wardrobe was either cat print or black. The fifteen-year-old grabbed his leopard print hoodie jacket, a pair of sports leggings, his red tiger print shoes, and ran to his suitcase. He unpacked the tier shirt that he had found hanging with other articles of clothing in a deserted shop. No one was going to charge him for stealing; everyone living there had gone to the next town over.

His hair was still very untidy, so he yanked a brush through it and slammed the door to his bedroom. He paced out of the apartment that he shared with his grandfather, who was currently visiting a family friend, so Yuri was left behind.

Stomping down the stairs as he usually did to the front door, he stood in the shivering midnight temperatures of St Petersburg. Even though there was no snow, the chill woke the boy up fully. So trudging all by himself on the cold pavement, he headed up to Victor's apartment fifteen minutes away.

When Yuri arrived, he was positively freezing, and his cheeks and fingers were red from the cold. He knocked impatiently, shivering slightly.

"Oi! You old geezer. OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR." he kicked the door before he heard some shuffling from inside, a murmuring voice that was most likely Victor's, before the apartment door opened.

Victor's eyes widened at the young boy standing in front of him. The twenty-seven year old man's hair had some silver strands sticking up, showing how much the man slept.

"Yuri!" he ran a hand through his hair and ushered the young boy inside. "What are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be sleeping?"

Yuri snorted and took off his jacket, flinging it onto the blue couch in the center of the stylish living space. "I'm surprised you can, after seeing those rotten _things_."

The apartment was just like Yuri remembered. The hanging glass lights were still there, but now they were newly tinted a blue color, and he found more blue around the place than there was before.

"Yo, what's with all the blue?" Yuri ran a finger along the blue vase of roses that sat on the coffee table. "You going through a new phase? Don't like dark monochrome colors anymore?"

Victor laughed nervously. Yuri has never seen the man nervous before. And his eyes kept darting around the room, like the man was never at rest. "Yeah, I guess you can say that."

Yuri walked around, looking at each of the new items that Viktor has added to the environment for the past two weeks. The blue vase, the blue drapes, the blue lights, and even a bouquet of blue roses on a table below a small painting with a silver frame. It was the same painting Victor had taken from the abandoned Katsuki house, the one that gave Yuri strange hallucinations, where a man was running around inside the painting.

"Victor." he called, crossing his arms and looking at the painting with speculation in his eyes.

"Yes, Yuri?" the man called from the other room. A minute ago, he had left to get ready for the day, since it was already around 5 and there was no point heading back to sleep. "What do you need?"

"What's with your new piece of decor?" Yuri pointed to the painting after the man came out, wearing a blue and white striped shirt and a pair of beige jeans. "I know you like interior design, but this old painting from that creepy house... it's weird you decided to keep it."

Victor paled and looked nervous, dashing towards the painting. "No, it's just-"

"Oh come on, Victor." Yuri grabbed the man's collar and shook it threateningly. "We all know that you're hiding something. You think I'm dumb enough not to notice how no one else has stepped foot in your apartment since we returned last week? And what's with that thing in the painting that I keep seeing? How do you explain that?"

Yuri took the painting off the hook and shook it a little. He looked with his piercing green eyes around the canvas, trying to see something. He wasn't sure what he was trying to find, but he was sure there was something absolutely wrong with the painting. A rather visible bump was on the small bed, with rising and falling motions. Yuri stared.

"How the hell is this painting moving by itself?" he murmured, but it was loud enough so Victor could hear.

Yuri flipped the painting around to check for any unusual mechanism that could have possibly attached to the front of the canvas and moved it. Nothing. Just a plain canvas back with a silver frame around the edges.

"You have some explaining to do." Yuri looked back at the older Russian man and scowled. "A fuck ton of it. So you'd better start right now."

Victor sighed through his nose and beckoned Yuri to sit down next to him on the couch. The teenager raised an eyebrow and stayed standing.

"Please get me that painting, will you?" Victor asked, holding out his hand. "And please be gentle with it."

Yuri scowled, allowing a little noise of disdain past his tongue, and passed the painting over to Victor. "What's so special about it, old man?" he asked, brushing his long blonde bangs out of the way.

Victor sighed again. He seemed to sigh an awful lot today, the blonde teenager noticed. Victor knocked gently on the framework of the painting, watching as the painted bump on the bed started to move and stir, until a head of black hair poked out from underneath. Yuri stared in horror, transfixed, as a small painted man came out of the bundle of blankets on the bed and sat down on the chair. He put on a pair of blue framed glasses and blinked owlishly with his big brown eyes. He didn't seem to notice the newcomer yet as he groggily greeted a 'good morning' to Victor.

"Yuri," Victor started. Both Yuris turned their head to look at him. The Japanese painting's eyes widened when he saw the blonde teenager with the silver-haired man. "This is Katsuki Yuuri. I found him in the painting at the site."

"What. The. Actual. Fuck." Yuri hissed. He turned to Victor with a bewildered look on his face. The boy stared backwards and forwards between the painted man and his annoying silver-haired friend, switching to Russian. "Why didn't you tell us about this sooner?"

"Because all Yakov would do is sell him off." Victor countered. "We don't know how he got in there, or what kind of strange magic - if it actually exists - the painter used to make him come to life. The poor thing is obviously traumatized; Yuuri doesn't need to be sold off."

"YUURI?!" Yuri yelled and pulled at his blonde locks. He switched to English again, seeing that it was easier to communicate with the painting that way. "Your name is also Yuri?!"

Victor had a mischievous glimmer in his sky blue eyes. He picked at his cuticles carelessly. "Well, only one can be Yuri at a time to avoid confusion, since there are two. So, Yuri!" he pointed with a grandiose gesture to the Russian. "You are now Yurio."

"Tch. I thought we agreed to no more nicknames." Yurio muttered.

"But on a serious note." Victor grabbed the green-eyed boy by his shoulders and whispered. "You're not going to tell anyone, are you?"

"Depends." the teenager shrugged. "He would cost a _lot_ of money to those who are willing to give us the right price-"

"We are archaeologists!" said Victor exasperatedly. "Please don't tell anyone else about this, I'm begging you, Yurio."

Yurio rolled his eyes in disdain and glared at the painted Japanese man in the painting. His brown eyes were wide, pupils dilated in shock, unsure of what to do as he froze on his chair. "Fine, old man. Just don't call me Yurio! And I'm hungry, so get me some fucking pirozhki already!"


End file.
